We learned that Australian racing is the most resilient sport in the country as while everything else has gone by the wayside, amazingly we are still going thanks to the dedication of participants in regards to all the rules and regulations and the lawmakers, who appear to have done something right.
Slashing prizemoney on the feature races in no way lessened their quality and we saw some great results, so what did we find interesting.
1/ Century for Snitzel- Champion sire Snitzel had been having a comparatively quiet season by the lofty standards he sets for himself, but passed the milestone of 100 lifetime stakes-winners last Saturday and surged to the top of the Australian General Sires List.
The success of Geoff and Mary Grimish’s homebred colt Splintex brought up the milestone and gave him a stakes double on the day with his amazingly tough two year-old Away Game claiming her fourth win this season in the Group II ATC Percy Sykes Stakes.
She’s had seven starts on six different tracks in Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales, starting on November 19 and racing right through to contest the Magic Millions, Blue Diamond and Golden Slipper.
Away Game is the highest stake earning juvenile this season with $2.7million in the bank and you can’t help but have the highest admiration for a horse that must have the constitution of an iron woman.
2/ Addeybb vs Might and Power- They say you can’t compare horses of different eras but in this case we will.
The William Haggas trained import Addeybb (IRE) looked good winning the Group I Ranvet Stakes last month and backed it up to score a dominant win in the Group I ATC Queen Elizabeth Stakes earning high praise from connections and the media.
In the hours after his victory. Might and Power, the horse who won the same race back 1998 , took ill with colic and by morning he was gone, prompting an outpouring of emotion as we all recalled the achievements of a phenomenal horse.
That day he won the QEII at Randwick, he won by so far that the second horse Champagne pricked her ears to the line thinking she had won!
For the record he won by ten and a half lengths on a heavy 10 track clocking 2.05.15, Addeybb on a heavy 8 clocked 2.06.92.
3/ Australia’s Best Maiden – The Group I ATC Australian Oaks was won with authority by Colette, but runner-up Toffee Tongue has surely taken over the mantle of ‘Australia’s best maiden’.
A $500,000 Karaka purchase, Tavistock filly Toffee Tongue is a blueblood being a full sister to HK Horse of the Year Werther and Group III winner Gobstopper. Her record of four seconds and a third from eight starts is no doubt a source of frustration for connections, but her turn will come…. Unfortunately not in the Queensland Oaks though as that has been cancelled due to the pandemic.
4/ Kiwis Hold Back Imports – A two mile contest on a heavy track is always going to require a tough horse and seven year-old Kiwi bred mare Etah James was the toughest of them all in the Group I ATC Sydney Cup beating another Kiwi in The Chosen One.
Kiwi bred stayers used to dominate this race winning 14 Sydney Cups between 1980 and 2000 and then only six from then until now. The practice of buying tried imports from Europe has raised the standard of our staying races making it harder for those dour one paced Kiwis to make their mark, but on a heavy track they came into their own.
5/ Aussie Success for Scat Daddy – A great many Australian breeders have mares in foal to sons of ill-fated champion sire Scat Daddy, so the success of his Group I winning daughter Con Te Partiro (USA) has been illuminating.
She was bought out of North America as a race filly/breeding prospect for $US575,000 by Newgate Farm and SF Bloodstock with her victory in the Group I ATC Coolmore Legacy her second at the elite level this autumn as she previously won the Group I ATC Coolmore Classic last month.
She is one of 129 stakes-winners worldwide for Scat Daddy, who had eight seasons at stud before his premature death in 2015 at age 11.
His 129 stakes-winners came at a rate of 12.8% stakes-winners to runners and they include 31 Group I winners, four of which were standing here last spring – Justify (USA), No Nay Never (USA), Mendelssohn (USA) and Sioux Nation (USA), while Caravaggio (USA) was here in 2018, so had foals born last spring.
Scat Daddy was a versatile sire whose progeny have excelled on all surfaces and over a range of distances with a stream of brilliant precocious sprinter milers his stock in trade, but interspersed with some terrific classic type horses with his jewel in the crown undefeated Triple Crown hero Justify.
What sort of an impact he can make here in coming years will be interesting to see unfold.
Footnote: If you missed our Five Things from the Championships Day 1, you can read it here.
